The Dead Ground (33 page)

Guy pulled up. ‘He’s the policeman and he farms too?’

‘Most people do two jobs. Not much money round here.’

The house had Venetian blinds and pillars topped with large stone eagles. The walls were seventies pebble-dash. Guy was all set to turn away when there was no answer at the doorbell. ‘He’s not in.’

‘Now hold on, he’s probably out back.’

‘We can’t just go round there!’

‘Of course we can.’ She laughed at Guy’s expression. ‘We’re not in Kansas now, you know.’

Round back smelled of animals, the stone yard slippery with mud and straw. A strong man of about fifty was manhandling a sheep between his legs, while it bleated pathetically. He wore a green plastic suit and goggles.

‘Garda Hanlon?’ Paula called, over the bleating.

The man dumped the sheep in a pen behind him, where it shook itself, and then he locked the gate, removing his goggles and dusting down his hands. ‘Aye?’

‘We’re from the North – we work at the MPRU? I don’t know if you got our message from yesterday, only we were in the area, and—’

‘Oh aye.’ He rinsed his hands under a nearby tap and stripped off the top half of the suit, revealing an Arran jumper. ‘Bloody sheep have all got hoof rot in the snow, so I had to take them down from the fields.’ He had a singsong local accent.

Paula introduced herself. ‘And this is Inspector Brooking, our team leader. He was at the Met in London.’

‘Indeed. Well, I hope you won’t find us too backwards, Inspector. There’s only me part-time out here, you see.’

‘Of course.’ The men shook hands, sizing each other up. Paula saw the Guard look her over too. She knew she was a curious addition to a police team, a young woman with wild red hair and muddy jeans. ‘What was it you were wanting?’ he asked.

‘We’re investigating a link to one of our cases. A family who lived out here – the Conaghans?’ Paula spoke for them both, sensing Guy was uncomfortable.

He wiped his hands slowly on his jumper. ‘Which Conaghans would that be now? Sure half the area’s called that round here.’

‘Mary Conaghan,’ said Paula. ‘And – Bridget. There was a sister, we think, Bridget Conaghan.’ The name was like a whisper on the wind. Why hadn’t they heard a word about her, if she’d existed?

The Guard had stopped his wiping, and he sighed. ‘I’d a feeling you might mean them. Come in and get a drop of tea.’

Paula suspected all the tea-drinking was the worst part of the job in Ballyterrin for Guy, a metropolitan coffee drinker used to having ten different blends at his fingertips. Still, he did a sterling job of smacking his lips over it, sipping from the
Bord Gais
mug it came in. They were in the Guard’s good front room, the sofa stiff and unused, cheap tinsel draped over school pictures and wedding shots lining the walls. Paula nodded to them. ‘The family?’

‘Aye. The wife does be up in Letterkenny during the week. She teaches and there’s no work round here now.’ He said it matter of factly. The locals were used to the fact that their homeland was dying around them. ‘Now what can I do youse for?’

Paula explained how they’d visited the old farm in the hope of learning something about Mary Conaghan, who they suspected was linked to a case they were working on. He nodded. ‘The missing babies, is it? A terrible shocking thing. God rest the poor women too.’

‘Mary will have changed her name,’ Paula said. ‘We’ve traced her up to the seventies, when she was fifteen, and it seems she was sent to stay with cousins in Letterkenny. There was an incident during her stay when a child went missing, her cousin. We don’t know exactly where Mary went after that, but she most likely ended up in Dublin, working as a nurse. And we didn’t know until yesterday that she may have had a sister. Did you know them?’

He nodded slowly, steam rising from the tea to veil his craggy features. ‘If I remember right, Mary was a few years behind me in school. Skinny wee dark girl, glasses?’

‘That’s right.’

‘She lived on that big farm with her mother and grandfather – everyone knew him. Liam Conaghan, he was. A bit cracked. He left the local church because it wasn’t hard-line enough for his tastes. Rumour had it he started acting like a priest, dressed all in black and that, preaching sermons to the family every day. Big tall rake of a man. We were all heart-scared of him. Mary came in to school every day in the same dress, and we said she smelled of cows – well, you know what weans are like. Nobody really knew her well.’

Paula thought of the black-clad figure in the photos, head lopped off. The grandfather, that was. ‘What about the mother?’

He screwed up his eyes. ‘Her name was – Sinead, was that it? Sinead Conaghan. But I don’t recall this sister at all. Bridget?’ He shook his head. ‘No, she wasn’t at the school with us. And Mary never went past her teens, I don’t think. The kids get sent to town for secondary school, maybe that’s why she was in Letterkenny?’

‘We checked the records of schools there. No sign of her. You said they were all called Conaghan, as in it was the mother’s own name? She never married?’

‘Aye, that’s right.’

‘So who was the girls’ father?’ Paula asked the question baldly.

The Guard considered it. ‘I suppose no one ever knew. There was talk, you know, like in all small towns. But Liam kept them all on a tight rein. No one ever saw them much, at least not while he was alive.’

‘And Mary – did she come back at all after she was sent away? When the grandfather died, was she here for the funeral?’

He stroked his chin. ‘I don’t recall. I’ll see what I can find out for you, Dr Maguire. I was at the funeral – everyone was. Mostly to check he was really dead, I’d say. But Mary wasn’t there, I don’t reckon. Now that I think on it there was some scandal around it, but I couldn’t say what.’

‘When was this?’ Guy had stayed mostly silent, but was making copious notes. Paula suspected he was struggling with the accent.

‘Let me see, I was about eighteen – 1975?’

Mary would have been fifteen then. Paula nodded, it made sense. She left her aunt’s in disgrace over the child who’d gone missing on her watch, then she went – where? Ran away to Dublin? ‘Do you know what happened to Sinead, their mother?’

‘Oh aye. She was dead years before – wee mouse of a woman, hardly noticed her going, but my ma made me go to the funeral and all.’

‘So it was just the girls and their grandfather?’

He shrugged at Paula’s questions. ‘Aye, from when Mary was about twelve. But like I say, I never knew about any sister. She wasn’t at any of the funerals.’

‘And the woman who’s out there now – she says her name is Eilish.’

He screwed up his eyes, trying to remember. ‘The wife would know better than me, to tell you the God’s honest truth, but if I remember right, she’s a distant cousin of the Conaghans.’

‘And why is she living there now?’

‘I couldn’t tell you, Dr Maguire. I’m sorry. The family were so secretive, you know.’

‘Right.’ She exchanged the quick glance with Guy that meant they were done. They rose, Guy’s tea barely touched.

She shook the policeman’s hand. ‘Thank you very much, Garda Hanlon. Do let us know if you find out anything more.’

‘I will, but sure I don’t know if there’s anything else to find.’ He waited in the door to see them out, mug of tea in his hand, wellies on his feet.

Back at the hotel, Guy said he’d take the car into a local garage. ‘I don’t trust it to get us back without checking the brakes. I’ll call the unit too. I want to get Avril looking for Bridget Conaghan as soon as possible. I can’t believe no one’s heard of her before.’

‘Except Eilish.’

‘Oh yes, Eilish. Hmm. I’d rather not have her as our sole witness. Anyway, I’ll just be an hour or so, then I’ll settle up with the hotel. OK to wait?’

‘Sure. I might wander to the beach.’ She felt restless from sitting for so long in the car.

‘Good idea. You still look pale. Get some fresh air.’ He swept into the hotel.

Paula was glad to be alone. It was stifling, all that time with Guy. She was pulling obsessively at her jumper every minute, in case he saw the curve of her – even though she knew it barely showed yet. She could feel the secret clacking hard against her teeth, so badly did she want to tell him. But then there was Aidan, interceding in every word she said to Guy, between them on the bed, slinking round the corners of her vision. She thought of him in Maeve’s flat, in his underwear, hair rumpled with sleep, and gritted her teeth. If only she could have discussed this with him. She imagined his eyes going wide when she told him there was a sister.

The beach was so windy she could hardly see, hair whipped and stinging into her eyes. The sea twisted like a coiled snake, turquoise over navy, and further out the white breakers crashed. Paula remembered being very young, coming to Donegal with her parents, her mother writing the child’s name in the sand in a big heart – PAULA. PJ building a sandcastle that withstood the sea’s onslaught. She shivered deep in her bones. To be truly alone, for the first time in months, it was freeing. She began to walk along the shoreline, feet pounding on the sand. The wind sealed her off, hard against numb ears and face.

Weeks had gone by, she realised. She was still pregnant, and every gesture made her wonder if she’d ever really planned to take that flight to England. Was it already too late for her? By failing to decide, had she let the decision make itself, in effect?

Paula walked for some time before realising she’d reached the end of the beach, and that she was no longer alone.

She righted herself when she saw the man on the rocks. He was sitting in the mouth of a dark sea cave, the inside already lapping with water as the tide came in, his soft-soled trainers soaked through. He was dressed all wrong for the day, in old-fashioned straight jeans and a denim jacket with badges on it. She was several metres away on the shore. Her heart beat fast, but something kept her there. ‘Hello,’ she called, the wind snatching her words. ‘Are you looking for me?’

Silence. She tried Irish. ‘
Dia dhuit
.’ Hello. God be with you, it meant literally.

He moved and she saw the malformation of his features, the eyes bulging over a ruined face and the patchy ginger hair she recognised from when he’d emerged in the fog.

‘You were at the hotel? And before that, at the car?’ She wasn’t scared. The beach was isolated and the light low on that grey December day, the tide already licking her shoes, but she wasn’t scared at all. ‘I’m Paula.’

He was shaking, from cold or from fear or maybe both. ‘Are you going to tell me your name?’ No answer, but she heard a strange low noise above the wind and sea. Almost like a keening. She moved closer. ‘You can tell me, you know—’

He moved suddenly, and was almost on top of her. Paula stood her ground, arms crossed over her stomach, shaking. As he came close, sliding to and fro on the rocks, he fumbled for her cold hand – his was pale and clammy – and pushed something into it. Then she just heard footsteps running away across the hard sand, and he was gone. She looked down, pushing away the wet hair that blinded her. Crushed into her hand, sodden with rain, was a bundle of old papers. Letters.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Stream Street, Letterkenny. That was where Mary Conaghan’s aunt had lived, according to the Gardai files on the abduction case. Not really her aunt but a second cousin of her mother’s, a Mrs Ann Gillan. There Mary had cooked and cleaned and helped care for the six children, until of course the youngest, Michael, went missing out of his crib.

Paula and Guy had stopped off in Letterkenny, Donegal’s main town – for what it was worth – on the way home, rain lashing the windscreen. Paula had the letters in her bag, wet and tied up with string. She hadn’t mentioned them to Guy and her mind was still reeling. If he knew she’d approached a stranger on the beach, he’d have gone ballistic. She was supposed to be curbing her maverick tendencies, after the Halloween incident. She kept the bag on her knee so her fingers could brush the packet, reassuring herself it had really happened. What did it mean?

The house they were looking for was on a narrow backstreet in the town. It was pebble-dashed and squeezed, a blue front door opening right out onto the pavement.

Guy shut the door of the car and turned the key. ‘Is there any chance they’ll still be living here? I mean, it was years ago.’

‘You’d be surprised. People tend to stay put, in Ireland. Here goes.’ Paula rang the bell – they took it in turns to do this, both of them afflicted with a sudden crippling shyness just before they had to make the first approach. That wariness, the fear in people’s eyes when they realised who they were. It could put you off.

The woman who answered had a baby on her hip and short dark hair in a bob. ‘Yes?’

Paula’s turn. ‘I’m so sorry to bother you, madam, but we’re looking for any information on a Mrs Ann Gillan, who used to live here in the seventies, if you—’

The woman was frowning. ‘Mammy? She passed away last year. What are you wanting with her?’

Guy took over. ‘I’m sorry to intrude, ma’am. We’re from the police in the North. Would we possibly be able to take up a few moments of your time?’

She was holding the door open already, though her face was still confused. ‘What did you want with Mammy?’

‘It’s about your cousin,’ said Paula, unbuttoning her coat before they got kicked out. ‘Your cousin Mary.’

‘Oh,’ said the woman, hoisting her child against her knitted jumper. ‘Her.’

Laura Maginn, née Gillan, was the second-youngest member of the family Mary had cared for, or not cared for, depending on your point of view. ‘She was a bit scary,’ Laura confessed, proffering fruit bars and tea. ‘Sorry, I don’t keep biscuits in the house.’ The place was tastefully decorated in shades of taupe, a small real Christmas tree wafting a fresh pine scent. Paula was a little transfixed by it – the pretty lights, the wrapped presents, the sheer niceness of it all. This was how life was supposed to be just before Christmas. Not racing round the country with your married boss.

‘Scary how?’ Guy had declined tea on this occasion, perhaps feeling it wasn’t likely he’d be lynched by someone modern enough not to purchase industrial-sized packets of Fig Rolls for the sake of any occasional visitor.